Abstract

This article examines Zionist claims to colonize Palestine and the role of Great Britain and prominent European Zionist Jews in the effort to establish Israel. Theodore Herzl, his lieutenants, and supporters personify Hannah Arendt’s phrase “the banality of evil” while acting and appearing as respectable statesmen, scientists, journalists, and businesspeople who advocated for freedom, liberation, and combating antisemitism. They deliberately collaborated with known antisemites and worked to dismantle ancient Jewish communities, relentlessly removing Jews out of their countries of origin, colonizing Palestine for the creation of a Jewish state, ethnically cleansing the indigenous people of Palestine, fabricating history, erasing Palestine and its long history, demeaning and oppressing the Palestinian people, and suppressing and appropriating Palestinian culture.

Herzl’s Zionism: Historical and Ideological Development

Herzl’s Zionism is the political ideology behind the establishment of Israel in Palestine. It is the product of European Jewish socio-economic conditions. Herzl wrote, “We are what the Ghetto made us. We have attained pre-eminence in finance, because medieval conditions drove us to it. The same process is now being repeated. We are again being forced into finance, now it is the stock exchange, by being kept out of other branches of economic activity. Being on the stock exchange, we are consequently exposed afresh to contempt. At the same time, we continue to produce an abundance of mediocre intellects who find no outlet, and this endangers our social position as much as does our increasing wealth. Educated Jews without means are now rapidly becoming Socialists.” ¹ As a political ideology, Zionism emerged in the 1880s along with other ideologies like colonialism, socialism, nationalism, fascism, and national socialism. Lenni Brenner in his well-researched and documented work examines the relations between fascism, Nazim and Zionism. ² Historically, Leon Pinsker, a Russian Jewish doctor, and a founding leader of the Hibbat Zion movement, is considered the father of political Zionism. On January 1 1882 he published a pamphlet in German called Autoemanzipation! (literal translation Autoemancipation!) In this pamphlet he advanced a form of Jewish nationalism suggesting the idea that Jews could be fully realized culturally and politically only in a homeland of their own. Some Christian Europeans and European Jewish Zionists argued that Europe’s “Jewish problem” could be resolved by dismantling its ancient Jewish communities, clearing Europe of its Jewish population, and settling them out of Europe – the Nazi regime in Germany had its plan to clear Germany of its Jews and settle them in Madagascar in Africa. ³ Herzl’s plan entailed the dismantling of ancient Jewish communities and transporting them out of Europe, “If I wish to substitute a new building for an old one, I must demolish before I construct.” ⁴ To Evangelical Protestant Christian Zionists, the sooner that the Jews are gathered outside of Europe the sooner the second coming of the Messiah would be realized. Other factors at play were the social currents in Europe that brought together the interests of influential wealthy Jews and established powerful Gentiles to rid Europe of its Jewish agitators for revolutionary change and social justice in their countries of origin and use their energy to settle and colonize non-European lands. After meeting with Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany in 1898, Herzl wrote an entry in his diary, “I explained that we were taking the Jews away from the revolutionary parties.” ⁵ Colonial designs gave impetus to such wealthy Jews like Baron Maurice de Hirsch who created the Jewish Colonization Association (JCA) which by 1920 recruited and transported 150,000 East-European Jews for the purpose of colonizing Argentina and Baron Edmond De Rothschild who in 1924 established the Palestine Jewish Colonization Association (PJCA), which acquired more than 125,000 acres of land from feudal non-Palestinian families and created around 30 settlements in Palestine. Ultimately, the Baron (and his family) to whom the Balfour Charter was addressed financed and established a winemaking business and forty-four Jewish communities, including kibbutzim and moshavim. Both schemes hired only Jewish labor and were managed to maximize Jewish gains. Atheist secular Zionist Jews who left their faith and Zionist religious Jews collaborated closely to achieve the Zionist main colonial objective to establish “a Jewish homeland.” The larger Jewish European population was opposed to political Zionism. In 1897, the Munich Jewish community prevented Zionist Jews from holding their first official Congress in the city. The Congress was moved to Basel, Switzerland, instead. In July 1897 Reform Rabbis meeting in Montreal issued a strong statement against the idea of an independent Jewish state. In October 1898 Jerusalem’s Rabbis refused to meet with Herzl and his delegation and refused to offer them a reception during their visit to the city. In April 1913 the Central Union of German Citizens of the Jewish Faith adopted a resolution disassociating themselves from Jewish nationalism. In November 1917 the League of British Jews opposed defining Jews as a nationality and rejected the Balfour Declaration. In July 1918 the US Central Conference of Reform Rabbis opposed Zionist aims and Jewish nationalism in Palestine. The Orthodox Jews of Neturei Karta still maintain a strong principled position that forbids Jews from having a state until the coming of the Jewish Messiah. ⁶ In addition, many prominent Jews opposed Zionism like the American banker and philanthropist Jacob H. Schiff, British Chief Rabbi Hermann Adler, Edwin Montagu who served as Britain’s Secretary of State for India from 1917 to 1922, Viennese Rabbi Moritz Güdemann, and philosopher Hermann Cohen to name a few. ⁷ With the backing of a few hundred Zionists, Zionism emerged as a political organization in 1897 with its own ideology, platform, methodology, and structure. With the successes of Zionism and Great Britain’s strong support for Zionism, some of the Jewish opposition began to weaken:

Though Zionism has a particular logic that emerged from the events surrounding it, not all Jews subscribed to that logic and in fact a majority of Jews initially did not. Their opposition stemmed from a number of directions. Jewish liberals, committed to the idea of Jewish integration, thought that Zionism, by conceding to the permanence of anti-Semitism, would in turn lead to more anti-Semitism. Orthodox Jews believed that Jews had been exiled in ancient times because of their sins and would return only with God’s will and in messianic times. They believed that taking action to return to Palestine en masse was nothing short of heresy. This religious opposition would change as religious streams of Zionism emerged, but it is important to recall that Orthodoxy was initially deeply opposed to Zionism. Another Jewish group, the Autonomists, believed in the national and cultural specificity of Jews, but believed that the solution to Jewish problems would be found within the places they lived, by demanding cultural autonomy. Many of them promoted Yiddish (not Hebrew) as the Jewish national language. Meanwhile, some Jews thought that the division by nationality was highly inappropriate and joined socialist movements not organized in national terms. ⁸

Early on, the Zionist leaders recognized the importance of organization (The Zionist Organization), finance (The Jewish Colonial Trust), media (the German language newspaper Die Welt) and diplomacy (meeting and lobbying world leaders and governments including the Ottoman Sultan, the German Kaiser, President Wilson, the King and prime ministers of Great Britain, French diplomats, the Pope, and many others) in their quest to achieve their objective: transporting Jews out of Europe in order to colonize and establish a Jewish homeland. In addition to dealing with legitimate world leaders, the Zionists interacted with Europe’s fascists and Nazis. ⁹

In February 1896 Theodor Herzl published his pamphlet Der Judenstaat in German (literal translation is ‘The State of the Jews’ or as commonly known The Jewish State in both Leipzig and Vienna by M. Breitenstein’s Verlags-Buchhandlung. In his pamphlet, Herzl clearly reveals a mastery of understanding of how international politics of the time worked. He required the backing of a European power for his vision of a Jewish state to be realized, because the Zionists were unable to accomplish the task alone and there was no uninhabited or unoccupied territory to be had. His understanding was based on late nineteenth-century European political dealings that included the notion that sovereignty over non-European colonies is vested in a European monarch or government — though the American revolution of 1776 and its final constitution of 1789 110 years earlier reversed this archaic thinking and instead adopted the practice that sovereignty is vested in the people. Herzl demanded:

Let the sovereignty be granted us over a portion of the globe large enough to satisfy the rightful requirements of a nation; the rest we shall manage for ourselves. ¹⁰

Herzl’s Zionism: The Structure

Herzl stressed that his simple plan was to obtain sovereignty from a European power over a non-European land to establish the Jewish state. Herzl’s proposed structure included three organs: “The Society of Jews”, the “Jewish Company” ¹¹ , and “The Jewish Local Groups.” The Society (the Zionist Organization) was established in 1897, the Company (the Jewish Agency for Palestine) was established in 1929, and the Jewish Local Groups were created over an extended period. Both, “The Society of Jews” and the “Jewish Company” were expected to work together closely and coordinate their activities. Sovereignty was to be sought (if need be, bought) and received by “The Society of Jews” – this explains why the Balfour Declaration was addressed to Lord de Rothschild of Great Britain.

1. The Society of Jews

According to Herzl, the Society of Jews will be composed of Jews who agree with the idea of the Jewish state as explained in his pamphlet and who will be authorized to speak with other governments on its behalf. The Society of Jews will have local influential branches that will generate important information to be shared with the Jewish Company and will render assistance to “the Company’s colonists” and information and instructions to departing Jews. The Society will be viewed by the other world governments as the authority empowered to create the Jewish state. It will concern itself with scientific and political work and decisions. In dealing with European powers in possession and control of the land, the Society guaranteed to be subordinate to European powers, and promised financial incentives and structural improvements in the country.

b.The Jewish Company

To Herzl, the Jewish Company was to conduct international business operations and be distinguishable from the Society of Jews. ¹² It was to be structured as a Jewish land-acquisition chartered company without sovereign authority and authorized to carry out colonial tasks in the new country. ¹³ The Jewish Company was to be established in London in accordance with English laws and subject to its jurisdiction and protection. Its capitalization was to be in the range of 1000 million German marks or 50 million British pounds or 200 million US dollars. For raising the necessary funds, “The three methods of raising capital are: (1) Through big banks; (2) Through small and private banks; and (3) Through public subscription.” ¹⁴ The Company was to take over, manage, sell, or barter the assets of departing Jews from their respective countries of origin and convert them into cash or to provide material goods (swapping houses and estates). The Company was to enter into business transactions with its officer at reasonable rates and engage in land speculation provided that all financial gain would go to the Company. ¹⁵ The Company would be permitted to engage in the introduction of industries to the settlements, construction, the sales of dwellings, the hiring of Jewish workers, and the raising of and organizing of an army equal to “a tenth part” of the total colonial Jewish male population to quell possible mutinies. ¹⁶ It would endeavor to implement the decisions of the Society of Jews in addition to organizing the economic and commerce activities in the new country and serving as the “liquidating agent” or receiver of the assets of Jews being transported out of Europe. ¹⁷ The Jewish Company would open bank accounts for departing Jews for the collection of their payments in the new country. Herzl provides an interesting example about sea transportation and shipping. He writes, “In many places Jews have control of the transport, and the transport businesses would be the first needed by the Company and the first to be liquidated by it. The original owners of these concerns would either enter the Company’s service or establish themselves independently over there.” ¹⁸ Fifty-six years later, Zim integrated Shipping Ltd. was created in 1945 by the Jewish Agency for Palestine along the lines that Herzl suggested. Another example of utilizing Jewish wealth, expertise, and know-how was when Belgian and Dutch Zionist representatives to the Seventh Zionist, held in Basel Switzerland in 1905, proposed to teach the diamond trade to the Zionist Jewish community in Palestine. In 1910, Belgian and Dutch Zionist entrepreneurs purchased the necessary testing, cutting and polishing machines and shipped them to Palestine. The machines were stored until the end of the 1930s when they became operational in Ramat Gan near Tel Aviv. Belgian and Dutch Zionist Jews were instrumental in creating a thriving diamond industry in Israel, which contributes billions of US dollars annually to its balance of trade and GDP. Though Israel has no diamond mines of its own, “Diamonds are Israel’s largest export market and account for 18.1 percent of its overall exports. Israel is the world’s fourth-largest diamond exporter and has a 9.25 percent share of a global market worth $116 billion a year.” ¹⁹ A third example of how Zionist Jewish-owned overseas businesses came to the aid of the Zionist scheme in Palestine involves the transfer to or theft by Israel of highly enriched uranium from the Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corporation (NUMEC) at Apollo, Pennsylvania. In 1965 after accounting for all processing losses, it was discovered that about 100 kilograms of bomb-grade uranium was missing. NUMEC’s President Zalaman Shapiro, a committed American Zionist Jew, maintained very close contacts with Israeli officers of military intelligence and the head of its nuclear weapons program. ²⁰ In a February 1976 briefing before the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), “[Mr Carl] Duckett [then Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Deputy Director of Science and Technology] startled the NRC group with CIA’s conclusion that the missing uranium was in Israeli bombs.” ²¹ As early as 1968, the CIA was in possession of scientific evidence placing the transferred or stolen bomb-grade enriched uranium in Israel, “He told them that environmental samples taken by the CIA in Israel in 1968 contained highly enriched uranium, whose enrichment level was so high it pointed to the Portsmouth, Ohio uranium enrichment plant as the source. Portsmouth was where NUMEC obtained uranium stock for its naval fuel products.” ²² The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) released an affidavit signed by a former NUMEC employee in 1980 stating that, “The former employee said he encountered armed strangers on the uranium plant’s loading dock one night in early 1965. He said they were loading what appeared to be canisters of HEU onto a truck in racks that he had not seen before. He also saw a shipping manifest that said the material was heading to a ship bound for Israel on the Zim-Israel shipping line. He said that a NUMEC manager later threatened him to keep his mouth shut about what he had seen.” ²³ In 1967, the former president of France the late Charles de Gaulle reached the conclusion that Israel was the aggressor in the war against its neighbors and swiftly moved to impose an embargo on the supply of 50 Mirage V jets that Israel purchased from France. In the meantime, in Bern, Switzerland, Mr Alfred Frauenknecht, a gentile, was arrested in 1968 for passing 20 crates full of secret plans, records and tooling instructions about the type of machines that are necessary to manufacture the Mirage III(S) jet to Israel via West Germany. Mr Frauenknecht received $200,000. ²⁴ Based on the stolen documents, Israel was able to produce two versions of the French Mirage III and V: IAI Kfir and IAI Levi respectively. Israel sold the secrets obtained from Mr Frauenknecht and prototypes to apartheid South Africa and the People’s Republic of China for tens of millions of dollars. In his defense, Mr Frauenknecht justified his action on “moral” obligation to help Israel because of the holocaust – the notion that Israel represents all Jews and is the inheritor of their legacy and claims is a misconception, if not a fraud.

Regarding the assets of departing Jews, Herzl advocates that officials of the Jewish Company will cooperate with “honest Anti-Semites” to control, liquidate and transfer Jewish assets. ²⁵ I wonder if Herzl’s “honest Anti-Semites” included the Nazi Regime in Germany with whom representatives of the Jewish Agency for Palestine (later the Israeli Government) signed The Haavara Agreement, which lasted from 1933 to 1939 and was intended to clear Germany of its Jewish population and liquidate their assets. Herzl recaps the role of the Jewish Company as follows:

The Jewish Company will be prepared to conduct the transfer of the smallest affairs equally with the largest. And whilst the Jews quietly emigrate and establish their new homes, the Company acts as the great controlling body, which organizes the departure, takes charge of deserted possessions, guarantees the proper conduct of the movement with its own visible and tangible property, and provides permanent security for those who have already settled. ²⁶

c.Jewish Local Groups

In addition to the “Society of the Jews” and “The Jewish Company”, Herzl wrote about the Jewish “local groups.” He elaborated on the nature and function of the Jewish Local Groups, “Every group will have its Rabbi, traveling with his congregation. Local groups will afterwards form voluntarily about their Rabbi, and each locality will have its spiritual leader. Our Rabbis, on whom we especially call, will devote their energies to the service of our idea, and will inspire their congregations by preaching it from the pulpit.” ²⁷ He advocated that local groups form small committees under the Rabbi’s presidency would settle local affairs. Local groups would receive recompense in the form of free building sites and facilities in the new country. ²⁸ Herzl envisioned that, “A group of travelers will be formed in each locality, large towns being divided into districts with a group in each district, who will communicate by means of representatives elected for the purpose. This division into districts need not be strictly adhered to; it is merely intended to alleviate the discomfort and home-sickness of the poor during their journey out-wards.” ²⁹ In collaboration with The Society of Jews, the Jewish local groups would pay great attention to education. ³⁰ Jewish local groups through their representatives would decide on the location of towns, town plans, distribution and transfer of land, and proper care taken to acquired legal rights ³¹ – no indication here that Herzl was referring to Palestinian land rights. Speaking of operations and structure, Herzl writes, “The principle of our administration will be strict centralization of our local groups’ autonomy.” ³² Through the years, many potent Zionist local groups such as the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) emerged to lobby and influence pro-Israel public policy — similar local groups exist in other countries.

Jewish Emancipation in Europe

Emancipation of Jews in Europe was underway in several European countries long before Herzl and others called for the adoption of the Zionist colonial scheme to clear Europe of its Jewish population and establish a Jewish state on land outside of Europe. In 1791, after the French Revolution, Jews in France were emancipated and granted full citizenship. This was the first time in history that Jews had been given such equality. In England, historians date Jewish emancipation to the period between 1829 to 1858, British Parliament enacted The Jews Relief Act of 1858 or The Jewish Disabilities Bill that removed previous barriers to Jews entering Parliament, a step forward in Jewish emancipation in Great Britain. This emancipation act was important as it made the Jewish presence in England legal and formal under law. Although Benjamin Disraeli, who was Jewish, had been a member of Her Majesty’s Parliament in 1837 and became her prime minister in 1868 Napoleon Bonaparte annexed the Republic of Holland and turned it into the Kingdom of Holland. Jewish emancipation began in Holland in 1796. Though a large percentage of the Dutch Jewish community desired to retain their own political separateness. ³³

Though circumstances were improving for Jews in Europe, Herzl was firm in his belief that, “The nations in whose midst Jews live are all either covertly or openly Anti-Semitic.” ³⁴ In 1958 David Ben Gurion, then Israel’s prime minister, said, “U.S. Jewry will not survive without links with Israel.” ³⁵ Instead of working on improving the conditions for the Jews in their countries of origin, Zionist leaders collaborated with and shared anti-Jewish sentiments that strictly aimed to clear Europe of its Jews. Herzl predicted a gradual continuous departure by poor Jews from Europe to settle, colonize, and establish the Jewish state, “We must not imagine the departure of the Jews to be a sudden one. It will be gradual, continuous, and will cover many decades. The poorest will go first to cultivate the soil. In accordance with a preconceived plan, they will construct roads, bridges, railways, and telegraph installations; regulate rivers; and build their own dwellings; their labor will create trade, trade will create markets, and markets will attract new settlers, for every man will go voluntarily, at his own expense and his own risk.” ³⁶ Herzl continued, “The emigrants standing lowest in the economic scale will be slowly followed by those of a higher grade. Those who at this moment are living in despair will go first. They will be led by the mediocre intellects which we produce so superabundantly and which are persecuted everywhere.” ³⁷ Approximately forty years later, David Ben Gurion said, “If I knew that it was possible to save all the children of Germany by transporting them to England, and only half by transferring them to the Land of Israel, I would choose the latter, for before us lie not only the numbers of these children but the historical reckoning of the people of Israel.” ³⁸ As the head of the Jewish Agency for Palestine, Ben Gurion practiced what he preached when he authorized direct negotiation and the signing of an agreement with Hitler’s Government in 1933 against the strong opposition of major Jewish organizations and personalities worldwide. The Haavara Transfer Agreement lasted from 1933 to 1939 with the objective of removing German Jews from Germany and their assets to Palestine:

Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany on January 30, 1933. Immediately thereafter, Jewish organizations began to agitate for and organize an international boycott of German goods to bring about meaningful changes or an end to the Nazi program that aimed at making Germany judenrein or “cleansed of Jews.” While the international boycott efforts were underway and gaining momentum worldwide, the Anglo-Palestine Bank, under the direction of the Jewish Agency for Palestine (also Germany’s main partner in the Luxembourg Agreement of 1952), and the Zionistische Vereinigung für Deutschland (the Zionist Federation of Germany) signed an agreement on August 7, 1933, with the German Ministry of Economics in Berlin. The signed document called the Haavara-Transfer Agreement (Haavara was a new company created in Tel Aviv specifically for this purpose), allowed German Jewish citizens who intended to relocate to Palestine to liquidate their properties and convert the proceeds in foreign currency to be deposited in a German Jewish Trust for the purchase of German products to be shipped and sold in Palestine. ³⁹

The colonial Nature of Herzl’s Plan

In his pamphlet, Herzl did not shy away from attributing appropriate terminology to describe his plan to colonize Argentina or Palestine. To him settlements meant colonies; departing Jews stood for colonists; the method by which to obtain sovereignty guaranteed by a European power indicates that a European power must be found to award the Zionists a charter to establish “a Jewish home” under its protection, and to finance his colonial scheme, a Jewish Colonial Trust must be created and capitalized – this Jewish Colonial Trust later became Israel’s Central Bank and Bank Leumi. Herzl had no illusion that he was running a colonial scheme to colonize a non-European land. Herzl admits that “Colonies secede from the mother country.” ⁴⁰ In Herzl’s formulation, the Jewish state was not breaking away from a mother country, but it must be its production. The second admission by Herzl while writing his pamphlet and in the following years until his death in Austria in 1904, is that he did not finalize in his own mind the location for his Jewish state, “It is true that the Jewish State is conceived as a peculiarly modern structure on unspecified territory.” ⁴¹ In his pamphlet, the countries of Argentina and Palestine were mentioned by name, but Israel was not. A person engaged in national liberation of the homeland would not confuse which territory is the homeland that is to be freed and on which land the state is to be created. His admission clearly shows the opportunistic nature of his colonial plan. Typical of other settler-colonial schemes, Herzl’s attitude towards the native Palestinians was genocidal. Herzl traveled to Palestine in 1898. There was no way for him not to have encountered the Palestinians in their thriving communities and fields. In his mind, Herzl did not want to see or acknowledge the existence of the Palestinian people or their humanity. His views influenced the thinking and practices of other Zionists, and certainly the philosophy behind settler-colonial apartheid Israel with tragic consequences to regional and world peace. Herzl’s brand of Zionism stripped Jews not only of their inalienable rights to become equal citizens in their countries of origin, but instantly transformed the departed Jews into settler colonists. Colonial charters empower settler colonists to carry on colonial policies and practices for their exclusive advantages. It regards native peoples as an existential threat that requires clearing out or minimizing their presence on the land by violence. Ahad Ha’am wrote:

And what do our brothers do? Exactly the opposite! They were slaves in their Diasporas, and suddenly they find themselves with unlimited freedom, wild freedom that only a country like Turkey [the Ottoman Empire] can offer. This sudden change has planted despotic tendencies in their hearts, as always happens to former slaves [‘eved ki yimlokh -when a slave becomes king – Proverbs 30:22]. They deal with the Arabs with hostility and cruelty, trespass unjustly, beat them shamefully for no sufficient reason, and even boast about their actions. There is no one to stop the flood and put an end to this despicable and dangerous tendency. ⁴²

Herzl’s Zionism is not the solution for the “Jewish question.” Jews can only exercise their right to self-determination, better their living conditions, enjoy equality, and live in dignity in their countries of origin. Transporting Jews out of their countries of origin is not the answer. Palestine has its own original people who have been struggling against the Zionist colonial scheme for more than 100 years. It is expected that their yearning and struggle for liberation and self-determination will continue until their rights are restored.

Zionist Biblical Claims

Though Herzl and most of the European Zionists around him were secular atheists, they claimed to fulfill a divine promise made by the Jewish God to the Jews at the time of biblical Abraham. Ben Gurion described this condition, “Since I invoke Torah so often, let me state that I don’t personally believe in the God it postulates … I am not religious, nor were the majority of the early builders of Israel believers.” ⁴³ A position that Christian Zionists including many of Great Britain’s top political leaders were sympathetic to and in agreement with. ⁴⁴ After 12 years (from 1905 to 1917) of intensive lobbying, negotiations, and coordination both the Zionists and the British Government reached an agreement on the wordings of the charter to be issued by Arthur Balfour that officially settled on Palestine as the location for their experiment in nation building.

Often, one of the main arguments given by the Zionists for the establishment of Israel in Palestine, is supposedly the promise God made to Abraham and his progeny in the Bible. Taking the Bible at face value, Genesis 17 describes a covenant between the Jewish God and the biblical figure Abraham whereby this God awards him and his offspring the land of Canaan (Palestine) in lieu of having every free and enslaved man in his household and possession becoming circumcised. In Genesis 23 we are treated to an intriguing sketch describing how Abraham who was just given the entire land of Canaan in Genesis 17 having to negotiate with the Canaanites, the original sovereign over and owners of the land of Palestine, to buy and insist on paying the generous amount of four hundred shekels of silver (the local Canaanite currency at the time and this is the current name of Israel’s currency) for a burial plot for his wife Sarah. ⁴⁵ Geneses 17 and 23, show a glaring contradiction.

In the 1830s John Nelson Darby an Anglo-Irish Bible preacher began a strand of Christianity called Dispensationalism and Futurism. Darby’s theology of pre-tribulation rapture was further popularized in Europe and the United States by the wide circulation of the Scofield Reference Bible. Darby’s theology of Dispensationalism asserts that ethnic/national Israel [the term Israel is used by Darby to refer to Jews and often utilized interchangeably] remains significant in God’s purposes and will be so in the future. He argues that in addition to saving a remnant of believing Israel in this age, God will save and restore national/ethnic Israel in the future. ⁴⁶ Dispensationalism gave rise to Christian Zionism, a potent theological and political movement in Europe and the United States advocating that the current secular settler colonial apartheid State of Israel is a fulfillment of Biblical prophecy. Biblical political interpretations are not new in politics – the white man’s burden in America, national socialism in Germany, and apartheid in South America were theologically justified. Theological interpretations risk reducing God to an entity that justifies colonialism, ethnic cleansing, apartheid, and genocide.

The historian Shlomo Sand finds that the political concept of the “Land of Israel” was invented in the nineteenth century by both Evangelical Christians and Jewish Zionists. ⁴⁷ Scholars universally agree that Palestine has been continuously inhabited, owned, and cultivated by its people long before the Bible. By design, Zionists have found it convenient to abridge this long and rich history to dramatize the spurious claim that the ancient Israelites were given the country because of a divine promise. Prominent scholars of history, archeology, and science refute such biblical claims. ⁴⁸ By using the Bible as a political tool, free scholarship and thought have been obliterated by the Zionists (both Jewish and Christians) to achieve the colonization of Palestine, the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians, and the fabrication of its history.

Christian Zionists’ motives in gathering the Jews in Palestine are based on 1. racism explained by their desire to clear Christian Europe of its Jewish population and 2. biblically justified by the fundamentalist Christian belief that the Second Coming of Jesus Christ was contingent upon the establishment of Israel and the ingathering of the Jews in Palestine. Combining them or taking them independently, this conduct may lead some Gentiles to interpret and advocate (as in the case of Darby) or support the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine.

Like the Bible and its Christian Zionist preachers before him, Herzl makes contradictory arguments: The Jews live in countries that are “Anti-Semitic,” ⁴⁹ that the Jewish question takes many forms but it should be made a global political question, and that the resolution of the Jewish question should not be limited to Judaism nor be handled by Jews only, I think the Jewish question is no more a social than a religious one, notwithstanding that it sometimes takes these and other forms. It is a national question, which can only be solved by making it a political world question to be discussed and settled by the civilized nations of the world in council.” ⁵⁰ Acknowledging that the religious claim to Palestine is secondary frees Herzl to be pragmatic about his choices of the location for his Jewish state and frees him to analyze and speculate about the benefits of establishing his colonial Jewish scheme in Palestine or Argentina. ⁵¹

Zionism and the Invention of the Jewish People

Settling on Palestine as the future location for Israel, the Zionist leaders have to figure out what to do with Palestine’s indigenous people, the Palestinians. In his pamphlet, Herzl dealt with the indigenous population of Palestinians without mentioning their name and by describing the Palestinians as wild beasts who should be eliminated, “Supposing, for example, we were obliged to clear a country of wild beasts, we should not set about the task in the fashion of Europeans of the fifth century. We should not take spear and lance and go out singly in pursuit of bears; we would organize a large and active hunting party, drive the animals together, and throw a melinite bomb into their midst.” ⁵² This genocidal advocacy clearly sprang the Zionist machine into action to deliberately and systematically malign and falsify the historical record of Palestine and its indigenous people, the Palestinians, in preparation for what was to come. ⁵³ Zionist Jews began to deny the existence of the Palestinian people and considered their homeland Palestine vacant awaiting for the Jews to colonize, settle, and make it bloom. Golda Meir, Israel’s former prime minister who is considered by some to be a labor-progressive Zionist said, “It was not as if there was a Palestinian people in Palestine and we came and threw them out and took their country away from them. They did not exist.” ⁵⁴ Fifty-four years later in a speech delivered in the French capital Paris, the ultranationalist Israeli finance minister Bezalel Smotrich said, “There is no such thing as a Palestinian nation. There is no Palestinian history. There is no Palestinian language.” ⁵⁵ The Zionists proceed to argue that present-day Jews are a coherent Semitic ethnic group and are the descendants of ancient Jews conveniently ignoring the fact that Jews lived in different geographical locations and grew in multiple cultures and communities as the case of the ancient Jewish communities in Iraq, India, Ethiopia, Russia, and Poland – this absurd argument contradicts yet another farce that all world Jewry have been persecuted for more than 5,000 years. Professor Shlomo Sand maintains that the “Jewish People” is a political construct (an invention) and that Jews have little in common between them. ⁵⁶ However, the Zionists tell us that the persecuted Jews were able to preserve their genetic purity and remain as a coherent Semitic ethnic group. Herzl seems to think that persecution of Jews is a sufficient factor to make the Jews a distinct ethnic people, “We are one people–our enemies have made us one without our consent, as repeatedly happens in history.” ⁵⁷ At the times of biblical Moses, Jews may have constituted a homogeneous group of people due to their small numbers. But modern Jews are certainly not a race and cannot be considered as a people, “Jews are not a race. People who identify as Jewish include individuals of enormously diverse geographic origins and physical appearances, making the idea that Jews could easily be designated a race in the sense of shared physical or biological characteristics implausible.” ⁵⁸ A recent genetic study shows that most European-Jewish women hail from Roman women converts. ⁵⁹ Other sources connect European Jews to the “Khazar,” members of a confederation of Turkic-speaking tribes that in the late sixth century CE established a major commercial empire covering the southeastern section of modern European Russia, “Although the origin of the term Khazar and the early history of the Khazar people are obscure, it is certain that the Khazars were originally located in the northern Caucasus region and were part of the western Turkic empire (in Turkistan).” ⁶⁰ The Caucasus origin of European Jews was confirmed by two studies that appeared in 2001 and 2013. The 2001 study published by the American Journal of Hematology (2001), National Library of Medicine, and on the internet references previous works by other scholars concludes:

In our sample, this low-level gene flow may be reflected in the Eu 19 chromosomes, which are found at elevated frequency (12.7%) in Ashkenazi Jews and which are very frequent in Eastern Europeans (54%–60%; Semino et al. 2000). Alternatively, it is attractive to hypothesize that Ashkenazim with Eu 19 chromosomes represent descendents of the Khazars, originally a Turkic tribe from Central Asia, who settled in southern Russia and eastern Ukraine and converted en masse to Judaism in the ninth century of the present era, as described by Yehuda Ha-Levi in 1140 a.d. (Dunlop 1954). ⁶¹

The second study by Dr Eran Elhaik that was published by the journal Genome Biology and Evolution in 2013 concludes, “Our findings thus reject the Rhineland hypothesis and uphold the thesis that Eastern European Jews are Judeo–Khazars in origin.” ⁶² The debunked Rhineland hypothesis proposes that Jews descended from Israelite-Canaanite tribes that left Palestine for the Rhineland, Germany in two waves in the seventh and fifteenth century (50,000 people). Despite wars, persecution, disease, plagues, and severe economic conditions, the European Jewish population was miraculously able to rapidly expand to 8 million by the twentieth century.

Zionist Jewish scholars see human history on earth as that narrated by the stories of the Hebrew Bible. The Jewish calendar began 5783 years ago marked by the creation of Adam and Eve on the sixth day of creation. According to scientific evidence, the earliest human remains discovered in Palestine were located south of Lake Tiberias at Ubeidiya. This site reveals remains of the earliest migration of Homo erectus from Africa that dates to the Pleistocene, c. 1.7 million years ago. The Ubeidiya site yielded axes of the Acheulean type. The location and the climate of the country and the abundance of water and vegetation seem to have attracted various peoples, “Because of a pleasant climate, level topography, fertile soil, and relatively abundant water, the rivers flowing into the lake and the adjacent plains have throughout history been the source of livelihood for various peoples. At El-ʿUbeidīya, 2 miles (3 km) south of the lake, lacustrine formations dating from about 400,000 to 500,000 years ago have revealed prehistoric tools and two human fragments, which are among the oldest in the Middle East. Canaanite (ancient Palestinian) structures have been uncovered that date to between 1000 and 2000 BCE.” ⁶³ In 1925, another significant discovery was unearthed in Safad, Palestine, and provided significant clues to human development in the area. The Zuttiyeh Cave ⁶⁴ is at the opening of a limestone ravine where a smaller cave known as Mugharet el-Emireh (Cave of the Princess) was excavated from 1925 to 1926 by Francis Turville-Petre. It was the first paleontological excavation in the region. Turville-Petre discovered a skull, referred to as the ‘Palestine Man’ or ‘the Galilee Skull’, that was initially described as the second Neanderthal-like specimen. It was originally attributed to a Mousterian stratum and is now thought to be from an earlier Acheulo-Yabrudian complex. Later studies showed that the face was relatively flat, with no evidence of Neanderthal-like facial prognathism. The frontal bone and part of the upper face were found in the Mugharan level, which leads to an estimate of the age of the fossil to range from 200,000 to 500,000 years ago. Similarities with Zhoukoudian remains suggest a possible ancestral relationship. The Palestine Man or the Galilee skull, along with many of Turville-Petre’s findings, is housed in the Rockefeller Museum in East Jerusalem. The archeological findings and science show that human presence in Palestine go back longer than the timeframe advanced by the Bible and Zionist Jewish historians and political biblical scholars.

Zionism and the Invention of The Land of Israel

In general, scholars agree that the history of the modern state began with the conclusion of the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 which established the concept of a sovereign independent state. As a sovereign independent state, Palestine did not exist as is the case with most of today’s modern states including the United States of America. Based on the norms and mores of ancient times, Palestine existed, was accepted, and recognized by its neighbors as a distinctly defined territory located in southern Syria. The Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, Maryland, USA houses an Egyptian statute dated to the period from 1780 to 1700 BCE From the inscription on the back of the statute “we learn that Pa-di-iset was a diplomatic messenger to Canaan and Peleset or Palestine’s neighboring lands.” ⁶⁵ No doubt that Palestine existed as a distinct entity with a distinctive culture that was involved in trade with its neighbors. Its people, the Palestinians, formed a distinct people enjoying a distinctive culture, albeit evidently influenced by other peoples and cultures with whom they traded and dealt with. At least, from 1905 to 1948, Great Britain in its official dealings with Jewish Zionists and the rest of the world referred to the country as Palestine and its people as Palestinians. To this day, Palestine is the home to approximately 7.4 million people who consider themselves Palestinians living under the domination and control of settler colonial apartheid Israel and four of the oldest continuously inhabited cities on earth, which settler colonial apartheid Israel is relentlessly trying to destroy and demographically change – changing the Palestinian cultural character of Palestine is another sign of the ongoing ethnocide.

Professor Nur Masalha in his meticulously and exhaustively researched book, Palestine’s Four Thousand Years of History, says:

The evolution across time of the country of Palestine as a distinct political geography – with its own distinct and diverse traditions and a mélange of styles –is deeply rooted in the local psyche and consciousness; the toponym (place name) of Palestine is deeply rooted in the ancient past from the Late Bronze Age onwards. The name is found in numerous and diverse sources for the Ancient Near East throughout the last 3300 years. ⁶⁶

In the fifth century BCE, the Greek historian Herodotus was the first to name and define the geographic location of “Palaistinê” as being situated between Phoenicia and Egypt. He described “Palaistinê”as being multifaith, polytheistic, and a larger country than the ancient Philistia. ⁶⁷

European powers have invaded Palestine several times. For example, the Greeks (from 333 to 63 BCE), the Romans (from 63–313 CE), and the Crusaders who attacked the country eight major times and dozens of minor ones over a period starting in 1095 and ending in 1291. France under Napoleon Bonaparte invaded Palestine from February to May in 1799. Great Britain conquered Palestine on December 9, 1917, to May 14, 1948. Like so many countries, Palestine has been the subject of colonization or military occupation by foreign powers for centuries. Great Britain occupied Palestine in 1917 for the main purpose of enabling European colonial Jewish settlers to establish “a Jewish home.” I consider this date as the beginning of the actual colonization and the establishment of Israel in Palestine by organized settler colonial European Jews albeit by depending on the active and direct collaboration with Great Britain.

The idea of removing European Jews from Christian Europe to Palestine began with European Gentiles based on a combination of factors: a European brand of Christian dogma; more than 400 years of colonialism outside Europe; deeply rooted hatred of Islam and Muslims that included the Spanish inquisition against Muslims in Al-Andalus between 1478 and 1834 resulting in the killing, expulsion or forceful conversions of hundreds of thousands of Muslims; the Crusades (at least eight major ones) to reclaim the Holy Land (Palestine) for Christianity starting in 1096 and ending in 1270; and the actual European colonization of Arab lands beginning in 1830 to the present. In 1799 General Napoleon Buonaparte, then Commander-in-Chief of the armies of France in Africa and Asia, was leading a military campaign to occupy Egypt, Palestine, and other parts of the region. After laying siege to Acre, Palestine, he was defeated and forced to retreat. Had he been successful, Napoleon had a declaration ready, printed, and dated April 20, 1799, making Palestine “a Jewish State” (97 years before Herzl’s The Jewish State and 118 years before the Balfour Declaration). ⁶⁸

From 1862 to 1905 several Jews were engaged in activities to colonize Palestine and Argentina. Among them: were Benjamin Disraeli, Moses Hess, Leo Pinsker, and Baron Maurice de Hirsch, “Baron de Hirsch, one of the wealthiest men of his time. De Hersch had founded the Jewish Colonization Association with the aim of settling Jews from Russia and Rumania in Argentina and other parts of the Americas.” ⁶⁹

The process to colonize Palestine by Jews or the invention of “The Land of Israel” and creating Israel in Palestine began officially with the publication in 1896 of Herzl’s pamphlet, The Jewish State in the German language. In 1896, Herzl tried to convince the Ottoman Sultan Abdul Hamid II (then the sovereign over Palestine and most of Arab lands) to issue a charter to sell Palestine for £20 million (around $2.2 billion in today’s money) to Jews to colonize Palestine. The Ottoman Empire was reeling under a debt burden of $11.6 billion in today’s money. The offer was turned down. ⁷⁰ Under scrutiny, Herzl was making offers to the Ottoman Sultan that he couldn’t fulfill. At the time, both of his possible Jewish financiers were Baron Hirsh and the Rothschilds family. Shlomo Avineri wrote:

Herzl had in mind primarily two banking magnates: Baron de Hirsch, known for extending to the Ottoman Empire the credit that made, among other things, the building of railways there possible, and who was already involved in Jewish philanthropy, mainly by supporting the establishment of Jewish agricultural settlements in Argentina; and the Paris Rothschilds, who were already known for their support of some of the first Jewish villages in Palestine, which they had rescued from bankruptcy. Herzl’s initial plan was to present himself before these financiers and convince them that he held the only key to the solution of the Jewish problem: the establishment of a Jewish commonwealth, preferably in Palestine (though at that time, mainly in deference to Hirsch’s philanthropic projects in Argentina, he did not rule out South America as an option. ⁷¹

The Making of the Balfour Declaration: Great Britain Occupies Palestine

On June 17, 1917, Great Britain represented by Foreign Secretary Lord Arthur James Balfour asked Chaim Weizmann to submit a draft letter to be issued by His Majesty’s Government on Palestine that would be satisfactory to the Zionists. On November 2, 1917, the same Lord Belfour granted a charter in the form of a letter addressed to Lord Lionel Walter Rothschild, a British Jewish politician and financier. ⁷² At the time of the issuance of the letter, Great Britain was not in possession of Palestine. Colonialism via charters was not a novelty. It was one of the methods used by European colonial powers to colonize countries outside of Europe. In his pamphlet, Herzl discussed the creation of a Jewish Chartered Company with the power to acquire land for colonial activities but without enjoying sovereign rights. ⁷³ In fact, European Jews were not strangers to colonization by means of chartered companies. The infamous Dutch East India Company, VOC (1602), the Dutch West India Company, GWC (1621) and the Levant Company (1811) were increasingly owned and managed by Jews, ”Although Iberian Writers said that crypto-Jews or Marranos played an important role in the formation of both the VOC and the GWC, research has shown that initially they played a minor role, but expanded during the period of the Dutch in Brazil.” ⁷⁴ The total population of Jews in Amsterdam in 1674 was 7,500 out of 215,000 people. In comparison, “In 1656, when the Company had already been deeply committed to the slave trade for at least twenty years, 7 out of 167 of the stockholders, or 4 percent, were Jewish, rising to 11 out of 169, or 6.5 percent, in 1958. In 1671, Jewish investors numbered 10, or 5 percent of the Company’s 192 shareholders. Three years later, 11 of the Company’s ‘main participants,’ or 10 percent of all such shareholders, were Jewish.” ⁷⁵ Both companies were heavily involved in European colonization and slave and opium trade.

On November 9, 1917, Great Britain occupied Palestine. The resources, influence and machinery of His Majesty’s Government headed by the Zionists Lloyd George, Arthur James Balfour, Herbert Samuel, and Mark Sykes sprang into action to bring about the final solution to turn Palestine into a Zionist settler colony on the road to becoming “a national homeland” for the Jews. From the beginning, none of the provisions contained in the Balfour Charter concerning the rights and political status of the others (Palestinians) were ever intended to be implemented or honored. This requirement was part of Herzl’s formulation for the Jewish state, “At the same time, the equal rights of Jews before the law cannot be withdrawn where they have once been conceded. Not only because their withdrawal would be opposed to the spirit of our age, but also because it would immediately drive all Jews, rich and poor alike, into the ranks of subversive parties.” ⁷⁶ In 1918, the Jewish population in Palestine was 60,000 out of a total population of 600,000 due to the increased number of incoming Jewish colonial settlers. From 1918 to 1948, the Jewish population in Palestine increased from 60,000 to 716,700. In comparison, the Palestinian population decreased through ethnic cleansing and deliberate killing by Zionist Jewish military organizations from 1,324.000 people to 156,000. ⁷⁷

The Manchester Zionist Operation

The charter to colonize Palestine was the product of extensive lobbying efforts of key personalities from diverse backgrounds and dominions. The network was built around Chaim Weizmann (a Russian Jew, a biochemist, and later the first president of Israel in 1949) who arrived in London in January 1905 from Switzerland. Weizmann, the chemist at Manchester University, succeeded in making acetone in the laboratory by the fermentation process. Acetone is a solvent that is used in making cordite which is an essential naval explosive. As First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill met Weizmann at the university in Manchester. During this meeting, Churchill was asking Weizmann to produce a huge amount of acetone. From 1914 to 1918, the factories built by the British Government enabled Weizmann to produce 90,000 gallons (340,369 liters) of acetone per year and the necessary cordite to produce a total of 248 million shells. ⁷⁸ The British political establishment was excited by Weizmann’s accomplishment. The acetone, cordite, and bombs produced for the British navy largely sealed the fate of Palestine. However, there were other considerations that were expected from the Jews in making and sealing that fateful decision. The British Government hoped that “… in exchange for their support of Zionism, “the Jews” would help to finance the growing expenses of the First World War, which was becoming increasingly burdensome. More importantly, policy-makers in the Foreign Office believed that Jews could be prevailed upon to persuade the United States to join the War.” ⁷⁹ Others predicated their move on the hope that the colonization of Palestine by pro-British Jewish colonial settlers would protect the approaches to the Suez Canal in neighboring Egypt and ensure a vital navigational route to British colonial possessions in India. ⁸⁰ The British were concerned with France’s claim on Palestine. Since Napoleon’s failed invasion of the Arab-Islamic World including Palestine in 1799, France saw itself as the protector of Arab Christians and the inheritor of Napoleon’s proclamation offering Palestine as a homeland to Jews under France’s protection. Both the British and Zionists succeeded in convincing France to renounce its claim to Palestine on April 19, 1917.

The year 1914 witnessed another development to strengthen the hands of Weizmann, Nachum Sokolow, a Polish Jew who became a British citizen later and a member of the Zionist executive who arrived in Great Britain to augment the Zionist work there. Weizmann and Sokolow formed a strong partnership. Sokolow latter was tasked to harness France’s support for the Zionist venture in Palestine. France, since the time of Napoleon Bonaparte and its invasion of Palestine in 1799, felt it had a stronger claim to Palestine than Great Britain or the United States of America. In the United States, the influential Jewish Justice Luis Brandies of the American Supreme Court was, in violation of ethics rules, lobbying the Wilson Administration to support the Zionist project. From the Union of South Africa, General Jan Smuts, a Gentile British War Cabinet member who was later promoted to the rank of a Field Marshal and an ardent white supremacist, committed his support to the Zionist cause and to lobby his government on behalf of the Zionist project. Later, General Smuts played a significant role in laying out the basis of the apartheid system in South Africa. Both Baron Edmund de Rothschild and Sokolow worked on Picot, the French foreign minister and the co-author of the Sykes-Picot Agreement, to support the Zionist venture. Prior to 1914 the bulk of the effort was concentrated in Manchester, Great Britain where Weizmann surrounded himself with energetic ardent Zionists. Their goal was clear: obtaining a public charter for the establishment of “a Jewish homeland” in Palestine. The newly arrived Chaim Weizmann was able to secure several meetings with key British politicians within months of his arrival from Switzerland in late 1904 shows the influence of the Manchester Zionist. The Manchester Zionist group included in its ranks – in addition to Weizmann and Sokolow – Charles Dreyfus, Charles Prestwick Scott (a Gentile who was the editor of the influential Manchester Guardian), Harry Sacher (a journalist on the Manchester Guardian), Leon Simon (Sacher’s friend who later became a senior British civil servant), Simon Marks and Israel Sieff (founders of the giant nationwide chain of retail stores, Marks & Spencer). The Manchester group had the Manchester Guardian as their mouthpiece, the deep pockets of Simon Marks and Israel Sieff, and the zeal of both Weizmann and Sokolow. Most of the Manchester group’s members were second-generation Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe except for Dreyfus who was born in France. Weizmann’s (originally a Russian Jew who became a British citizen in 1910) views of the Russian immigrants in Great Britain were couched in general unflattering if not racist terms:

You are dealing with the dregs of Russian Jewry, a dull ignorant crowd that knows nothing of issues such as Zionism. You cannot imagine, what it means for an intellectual to live in the English provinces and work with the local Jews. It’s hellish torture! ⁸¹

Weizmann’s racism against his fellow Jews was shared with Herzl’s contempt for educated poor Jews. Even wealthy Jews did not escape the venomous attack of Herzl, “The Yid, on the other hand, is a hideous distortion of the human character, something unspeakable low and repulsive. Where the Jews experience pain or pride, the Yids feels only caravan fear or twists his face into sardonic grin…. The Yid is the curse of the Jews.” ⁸² Weizmann’s racism was not limited to Russian Jews but included the indigenous peoples of Palestine and South Africa. His correspondence with General Jan Christian Smuts ultimately influenced the thinking and shaping of events regarding the issuance of the Balfour Declaration, white control and domination in South Africa, and settler colonialism and apartheid in Israel. ⁸³

The Manchester Zionist operation targeted and cultivated the sympathy and support ⁸⁴ of the top echelons of the British political establishment of the various parties from 1905 to 1948 including but not limited to the following politicians: Arthur James Balfour (served in the capacity of a member of the British War Cabinet, a foreign secretary, and a prime minster), Lloyd George (chancellor, minister for munitions, and prime minister), Winston Churchill (first lord of the admiralty, undersecretary of state for the colonies, minister of munitions, secretary of war, and prime minister). Robert Cecil (minister of blockade, and participated in the formulation of the rules of the League of Nations), Herbert Samuel (an ardent British Zionist Jew, high commissioner for Palestine, home secretary, and postmaster-general), and Mark Sykes (a British Zionist, served with General Smuts he participated in the Boar War in Southern Africa, one of the two assistant secretaries to the British War Cabinet, and a co-architect of the Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916).

Some of the politicians were committed Zionist Jews, but others were ardent Zionist Gentiles whose support was based on their contempt of the indigenous population and their version of Christian religious values. Scornful of the Palestinian right to self-determination, Lord Balfour wrote, “And Zionism, be it right or wrong, good or bad, is rooted in age-long traditions, in present needs, in future hopes, of far profounder import than the desires and prejudices of the 700,000 Arabs who now inhabit that ancient land.” ⁸⁵ Lloyd George on his part and drawing on his biblical prejudices, praised Weizmann and compared him to Nehemiah in the story of the children of Israel. ⁸⁶ Others were influenced by the acetone, cordite, and bombs factor, “Boosted by his new political connections and the adulation which followed his startling discovery of a new means of producing acetone (a significant boost for the British war effort), Weizmann’s campaign to secure British support for the Zionist cause was reaching its zeal.” ⁸⁷ Winston Churchill, a documented racist, was another British politician express his admiration of Weizmann by expressing his view on the Jews as a race:

No thoughtful man can doubt the fact they are the most formidable and most remarkable race which has ever appeared in the world. ⁸⁸

Clearly Jewish individuals like Weizmann and Gentiles like Churchill are allowed to express themselves in ethnic terms. No one is watching. When it comes to establishing “a homeland for the Jews” all racial remarks are acceptable if not welcomed by Zionist Jews.

Conclusion

The Zionists constructed elaborate schemes and arguments to bring about the establishment of the Jewish state or Israel in Palestine. Most of their arguments were contradictory in nature and unsubstantiated by evidence. Though most of the Zionists were atheists, they based their claim to Palestine on the Bible. The Bible is not a reliable source of archeology, history, or science. The Zionist claim that the Palestinians did not exist falls on its face given the historical records and the presence, to this day, of millions of people with deep roots, a sense of belonging, and attachments to a specific country called Palestine. The Zionists’ systematic denial of the existence of the Palestinian people, their national rights, and their legacy symbolizes Herzl’s genocidal advocacy against them. The Palestinian people attended to their land, built their villages, cities, and holy sites, and established and maintained good relations with their neighbors. The argument that the Jews were the original people of Palestine and that the Jews had a lasting influence on the country is specious. Even if one were to accept the argument that the Jews were in Palestine, their presence was short and insignificant in the long rich history of the country.

The argument that all countries where Jews lived were inherently anti-semitic is at least debatable. The situation and living conditions of European Jews varied and their political and legal rights were improving. European Jews enjoyed different cultures and living experiences. Most European Jews were anti-Zionists and were not heeding the Zionists’ calls to migrate to Israel. Even after the Holocaust, European Jews opted to go to the United States instead. Insisting on making Jews leave their countries of origin to colonize Palestine can be viewed as the very anti-semitic conduct that needs to be combated. Just imagine for a second if this Zionist argument that all countries are anti-semitic was true, not a single Jew would be found in Europe, the Americas, Asia, and Africa. The purpose of this Zionist argument is to scare and force Jews to leave their countries of origin and settle in the newly colonized country.

To justify the colonization of Palestine, Great Britain ignored the expressed wishes of the Palestinian people and violated their national rights. Ownership and sovereignty over Palestine were and still are vested in its rightful owners, the Palestinian people including the small community of Palestinian Jews who refused to meet or deal with Herzl. Great Britain (or anyone else for this matter) as an occupying power had no rights under international law to transfer title or lease or sell Palestine to the Zionists. Its endorsement and sponsorship of the Zionists enabled the Zionist colonial scheme to establish a Jewish home in Palestine. From 1917 to 1948 Great Britain was aware of the Zionist policies and practices against the Palestinian people and facilitated them. It created the conditions for the establishment of the Jewish state at the expense of the civil and political rights of the Palestinian people. Israel was the product of Great Britain — certainly not of a divine intervention. Great Britain not only gave the Zionists a charter (the Balfour Declaration) to colonize Palestine in 1917, but it also acted with all deliberations to actualize the Jewish state and its policies and practices of colonization, racism, ethnic cleansing, and violence. True to its colonial nature, Great Britain maligned, marginalized, and oppressed the Palestinian people but the Zionists were allowed to organize their state, build their Jewish-only colonies, arm and train their militias and military units, transport immigrants, and build an exclusive Jewish economy. Great Britain took further steps to legitimize its colonial charter granted to Lord Rothschild by making the charter part of its international agreements and arrangements in line with the Zionist wishes and Herzl’s requirements as specified in his pamphlet. The mere fact that the Manchester Zionists cell wrote the colonial charter should serve as a clear indication that Great Britain had no independent sovereignty of its own to act on the future of Palestine.

The Zionist claims for the idea of a Jewish homeland or Israel were false. The Zionist methods were deceptive and their emotional attachment to a colonial racist ideology blinded them from distinguishing emotional tales from scientific logical facts. This emotional attachment risks increasing anti-Semitism, prolonging the conflict, increasing the awful violence in the region, and intensifying its horrible manifestations of settler colonialism and apartheid for generations to come.

Notes

1. Theodor Herzl, The Jewish State, Texts Concerning The Jewish Question, 1896, 2 https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/quot-the-jewish-state-quot-theodor-herzl (Accessed June 15, 2023).

2. Lenni Brenner, Zionism in the Age of the Dictators (Westport, CT: Lawrence Hill, 1983) and Lenni Brenner, The Iron Wall: Zionist Revisionism from Jabotinsky to Shamir (London: Zed Books, 1984).

3. See, The Nazis & the Jews: The Madagascar Plan, 1 https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-madagascar-plan-2

4. Theodor Herzl, The Jewish State, Texts Concerning Introduction, 1896, 6. https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/quot-the-jewish-state-quot-theodor-herzl (Accessed June 15, 2023).

5. Lenni Brenner, Zionism in the Age of the Dictators, p. 5.

6. Zionism: Neturei Karta, 1 https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/neturei-karta (Accessed June 7, 2023).

7. Gianni Vattimo, Michael Marder, Deconstructing Zionism: A Critique of Political Metaphysics. Bloomsbury, 2013, p.44.

8. Liora Halperin, Origins and Evolution of Zionism. Opposition to Zionism. (January 9, 2015), 3. https://www.fpri.org/article/2015/01/origins-and-evolution-of-zionism/ (Accessed June 17, 2023).

9. For a detailed account about the interaction between Zionists, fascists and Nazis see, Lenni Brenner, Zionism in the Age of the Dictators. (Westport, CT: Lawrence Hill, 1983) and Lenni Brenner, The Iron Wall: Zionist Revisionism from Jabotinsky to Shamir (London: Zed Books, 1984).

10. Theodor Herzl, The Jewish State, Texts Concerning The Jewish Question, 1896, 6. https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/quot-the-jewish-state-quot-theodor-herzl (Accessed June 6, 2023).

11. Ibid, p.6.

12. Theodor Herzl, The Jewish State, Texts Concerning The Jewish Company, 1896, 1. https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/quot-the-jewish-state-quot-theodor-herzl (Accessed June 6, 2023).

13. Ibid.

14. Ibid, 12

15. Ibid, p.2.

16. Ibid, p.5.

17. Ibid, pp. 5 and 7.

18. Ibid, p.10.

19. Diamond Industry in Israel, Regoma, 1. https://www.reogma.com/industry-reports/diamond-industry-in-israel/ (Accessed June 18, 2023).

20. Victor Gilinsky and Roger J. Mattson, Did Israel steal bomb-grade uranium from the United States? Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (April 17, 2014): 4. https://thebulletin.org/2014/04/did-israel-steal-bomb-grade-uranium-from-the-united-states/ (Accessed June 18, 2013).

21. Ibid, p. 2.

22. Ibid, p. 3.

23. Roger J. Mattson, et al, The NUMEC Affair: Did Highly Enriched Uranium from the U.S. Aid Israel’s Nuclear Weapons Program? National Security Archives (November 2, 2016): 6. https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/nuclear-vault/2016-11-02/numec-affair-did-highly-enriched-uranium-us-aid-israels-nuclear-weapons-program (Accessed June 18, 2023).

24. Israelis Have No Comment on Report That Stolen Mirage Iii Plans Were Bought. JTA (September 29, 1969): 1. https://www.jta.org/archive/israelis-have-no-comment-on-report-that-stolen-mirage-iii-plans-were-bought#:~:text=Frauenknecht%20admitted%20after%20his%20arrest,that%20Israel%20purchased%20in%20Franc (Accessed June 18, 2023).

25. Ibid. p.9.

26. Ibid, p. 8.

27. Theodor Herzl, The Jewish State, Texts Concerning The Jewish Company, 1896, 2. https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/quot-the-jewish-state-quot-theodor-herzl (Accessed June 6, 2023), p.2.

28. Ibid, p. 3.

29. Ibid, p. 2.

30. Ibid, p. 3.

31. Ibid.

32. Ibid, p. 4.

33. The Netherlands (Holland) Virtual Jewish History Tour, 5. https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-netherlands-virtual-jewish-history-tour (Accessed June 18, 2023).

34. Theodor Herzl, The Jewish State, Texts Concerning The Jewish Question, 1896, 2. https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/quot-the-jewish-state-quot-theodor-herzl (Accessed June 6, 2023).

35. JTA, (June 13, 1958).

36. Ibid, p. 5.

37. Ibid.

38. Attributed to David Ben Gurion (pre-War 1939) by Martin Gilbert in Israel Was Everything in The New York Times (June 21, 1987) and by Lenni Brenner, Zionism in the Age of the Dictators, p. 149.

39. Samir Abed-Rabbo, Germany’s Never-Ending Guilt Trip, Arab Studies Quarterly, Volume 45, Issue 1, (March 23, 2023): 3.

40. Theodor Herzl, The Jewish State, Texts Concerning Negotiorum Gestio, 1896, 1. https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/quot-the-jewish-state-quot-theodor-herzl (Accessed June 18, 2023).

41. Ibid.

42. Tom Segev, One Palestine, Complete: Jews and Arabs Under the British Mandate, (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2000) p. 104.

43. David Ben-Gurion: Select Quotations, 2. https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/select-quotations-of-david-ben-gurion (Accessed September 29, 2023).

44. Manchester Balfour 100, 6. https://www.balfour100.com/manchester/ (Accessed May 5, 2023).

45. The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016) Ge 17:1–14 and Ge. 23:1–20.

46. Michael J. Valch, Dispensational Theology, 4. https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/essay/dispensational-theology/ (Accessed June 17, 2023).

47. For a detailed account please see, Shlomo Sand, The Invention of The Land of Israel, New York: Verso, 2012.

48. Biblical claims, Habitation in Palestine by the ancient Israelites, and their contribution to the development of the land have been the focus of debate between those who accept the version in the Bible of the conquest of Canaan by Israelite tribes, and those who reject it. Niels Peter Lemche, of the Copenhagen School of Biblical Studies, argues that the biblical picture of ancient Israel, “is contrary to any image of ancient Palestinian society that can be established on the basis of ancient sources from Palestine or referring to Palestine and that there is no way this image in the Bible can be reconciled with the historical past of the region”. (Niels Peter Lemche, On the Problems of Reconstructing Pre-Hellenistic Israelite (Palestinian) History, Journal of Hebrew Scripture). According to Jon Schiller and Hermann Austel, among other authors, while in the past, the Bible story was seen as historical truth, “a growing number of archaeological scholars, particularly those of the minimalist school, are now insisting that Kings David and Solomon are ‘no more real than King Arthur,’ citing the lack of archaeological evidence attesting to the existence of the United Kingdom of Israel, and the unreliability of biblical texts, due to their being composed in a much later period.” (Austel, Hermann, The United Monarchy: Archaeological and Literary Issues, in Howard, David M. Jr; Grisanti, Michael A. (eds), Giving the Sense: Understanding and Using Old Testament Historical Texts (Kregel Academic). Professor Ze’ev Herzog wrote, “The school of biblical criticism that developed in Germany beginning in the second half of the 19th century, of which Julian Wellhausen was a leading figure, challenged the historicity of the Bible stories and claimed that biblical historiography was formulated, and in large measure actually “invented,” during the Babylonian exile. Bible scholars, the Germans in particular, claimed that the history of the Hebrews, as a consecutive series of events beginning with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and proceeding through the move to Egypt, the enslavement and the exodus, and ending with the conquest of the land and the settlement of the tribes of Israel, was no more than a later reconstruction of events with a theological purpose. Ze’ev Herzog, Deconstructing the Walls of Jericho (October 29, 1999): 2. http://websites.umich.edu/~proflame/neh/arch.htm (Accessed May 1, 2023). Professor Herzog stated there was no evidence that supports: “[T]he Israelites were never in Egypt, did not wander in the desert, did not conquer the land in a military campaign and did not pass it on to the 12 tribes of Israel. Perhaps even harder to swallow is the fact that the united monarchy of David and Solomon, which is described by the Bible as a regional power, was at most a small tribal kingdom. And it will come as an unpleasant shock to many that the God of Israel, Jehovah, had a female consort and that the early Israelite religion adopted monotheism only in the waning period of the monarchy and not at Mount Sinai.” Ibid, p.1.

49. Theodor Herzl, The Jewish State, Texts Concerning The Jewish Question, 1896, 2. https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/quot-the-jewish-state-quot-theodor-herzl (Accessed June 13, 2023).

50. Theodor Herzl, The Jewish State, Texts Concerning Introduction, 1896, 2. https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/quot-the-jewish-state-quot-theodor-herzl (Accessed June 13, 2023).

51. Theodor Herzl, The Jewish State, Texts Concerning The Jewish Question, 1896, 6. https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/quot-the-jewish-state-quot-theodor-herzl (Accessed on June 13, 2023).

52. Ibid, p. 5.

53. For detailed accounts of the destructive impact on the Palestinian people see, Nur Masalha, The Palestine Nakba: Decolonizing History, Narrating the Subaltern, Reclaiming Memory (London: Zed Books, 2012) and Chada Karmi, Married to Another Man: Israel’s Dilemma in Palestine (London: Pluto Press, 2007).

54. In an interview conducted by Frank Giles, then deputy editor of The Sunday Times on June 15, 1969.

55. Seraj Assi and Zachary Foster, There’s No Such Thing as Palestinians’: The Ignorant Bigotry of pro-Israel Propagandists, Haaretz (May 21, 2023) p. 2. https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-03-21/ty-article-opinion/.premium/theres-no-such-thing-as-palestinians-the-ignorant-bigotry-of-pro-israel-propagandists/00000187-03b9-dde5-ab8f-23bd95600000 (Accessed September 25, 2023).

56. See, Shlomo Sand, The Invention of the Jewish People (London: Verso Books, 2009) and The Invention of the Land of Israel (London: Verso Books, 2013).

57. Theodor Herzl, The Jewish State, Texts Concerning The Jewish Question, 1896, 4. https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/quot-the-jewish-state-quot-theodor-herzl (Accessed June 13, 2023).

58. Are Jews a Race?, My Jewish Learning, 1. https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/are-jews-a-race/ (Accessed May 1, 2023).

59. Jon Entine, Ashkenazi Jewish Women Descended Mostly from Italian Converts, New Study Asserts (October 8, 2013): 1-2. https://geneticliteracyproject.org/2013/10/08/ashkenazi-jewish-women-descended-mostly-from-italian-converts-new-study-asserts/ (Accessed May 1, 2023).

60. Khazar, Britannica (August 31, 2023): 1. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Khazar (Accessed April 24, 2023).

61. Almut Nebel, Dvora Filon, Bernd Brinkmann, Partha P. Majumder, Marina Faerman, and Ariella Oppenheim, The Y Chromosome Pool of Jews as Part of the Genetic Landscape of the Middle East, National Library of Medicine (September 25, 2001): 13. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1274378/ (Accessed June 6, 2023).

62. Eran Elhaik, The Missing Link of Jewish European Ancestry: Contrasting the Rhineland and the Khazarian Hypotheses, Genome Biology and Evolution, Volume 5, Issue 1 (January 2013): 25. https://academic.oup.com/gbe/article/5/1/61/728117 (Accessed June 6, 2023).

63. https://www.britannica.com/place/Sea-of-Galilee (Accessed May 1, 2023), p.1

64. For a detailed study on this site, please see: Songy Sohn and Milford H. Wolpoff, Zuttiyeh, Face: A View from the East, American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 1993, pp. 325-347. Also, B. Skelj, Human Evolution and Neanderthal Man, Antiquity Journal, 1960, Cambridge University Press (January 02, 2015): pp. 90-99.

65. Padiiset’s Statue – A Diplomat to Canaan and Palestine, https://joyofmuseums.com/museums/united-states-of-america/baltimore-museums/walters-art-museum/padiisets-statue/ (Accessed September 28, 2023).

66. Nur Masalha, Palestine: A Four Thousand Year History, 17. London: Zed Books, 2018.

67. Ibid, p. 22.

68. Ben Weider, Napoleon and the Jews, International Napoleonic Society (June 21-26, 1997): 7. https://www.napoleon-series.org/ins/weider/c_jews.html (Accessed May 18, 2023).

69. Theodor Herzl, Britannica, 2. https://www.britannica.com/print/article/264012 (Accessed May 30, 2023).

70. Elis Gevori, How Theodor Herzl Failed to Convince the Ottomans to Sell Palestine, TRT World Magazine, (2021): 1. https://www.trtworld.com/magazine/how-theodor-herzl-failed-to-convince-the-ottomans-to-sell-palestine-46991 (Accessed September 28, 2023).

71. Shlomo Avineri, Herzl’s Road to Zionism, Berman Archive (January 1 1998): 5. https://www.bjpa.org/bjpa/search-results?search=herzl%27s+road+to+Zionism (Accessed May 15, 2023).

72. “Balfour Declaration 1917, (Yale Law School): 1. https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/balfour.asp (Accessed April 22, 2023).

73. Theodoe Herzl, The Jewish State. Texts Concerning The Jewish Company, 1896: 1. https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/quot-the-jewish-state-quot-theodor-herzl (Accessed June 17, 2023).

74. Charles Boxer, The Dutch in Brazil, 1724–1654. (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1957), pp. 10–11.

75. Eli Faber, Jews, Slaves, and the Slave Trade: Setting the Record Straight, (New York: New York University,1988), p. 8.

76. Theodor Herzl, The Jewish State. Texts Concerning The Jewish Question, 1896, 3. https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/quot-the-jewish-state-quot-theodor-herzl (Accessed June 14, 2023).

77. Jewish & Non-Jewish Population of Israel/Palestine (1517 – Present): 1. https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jewish-and-non-jewish-population-of-israel-palestine-1517-present (Accessed April 24, 2023).

78. Fred Glueckstein, Finest Hour 170: Churchill and Dr. Weizmann: Scientist, Zionist, and Israeli Statesman, (December 3, 2015), International Churchill Society, pp. 3-4. https://winstonchurchill.org/publications/finest-hour/finest-hour-170/churchill-chaim-weizmann/ Accessed April 22, 20213).

79. Walter Rothschild and the Balfour Declaration, The Rothschild Archives, p.1. https://www.rothschildarchive.org/collections/rothschild_faqs/walter_rothschild_and_the_balfour_declaration (Accessed May 1, 2023).

80. Balfour Declaration, ((November 2, 1917): 1. https://www.britannica.com/event/Balfour-Declaration (Access on April 22, 2023).

81. “Manchester: Chaim Weizmann and how the Balfour Declaration was made in Manchester, (Balfour 100 Highlights): p.3. https://www.balfour100.com/balfour-centenary-lecture/ (Accessed April 22, 2023).

82. Quoted in Peter Loewenberg, The Private Life of a Nation, (December 31, 1989): P.3. https://www.nytimes.com/1989/12/31/books/the-private-life-of-a-nation-builder.html (Accessed June 18, 2023).

83. For a detailed study on views of Chaim Weizmann, please see Richard P. Stevens, Smuts and Weizmann. Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 3, No. 1 (Autumn, 1973), pp. 35–59.

84. Walter Rothschild and the Balfour Declaration, (The Rothschild Archives): 1. https://www.rothschildarchive.org/collections/rothschild_faqs/walter_rothschild_and_the_balfour_declaration (Accessed May 1, 2023).

85. Shaul Ariel, Zionism Doesn’t Need ‘Divine Promise’ to Justify Jewish Nation-state, (October 22, 2017): 3. Haaretz. https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2017-10-22/ty-article/.premium/zionism-doesnt-need-divine-promise-to-justify-jewish-nation-state/0000017f-db5a-db22-a17f-fffb40560000 (Accessed June 6, 2023).

86. Fred Glueckstein, Finest Hour 170: Churchill and Dr. Weizmann: Scientist, Zionist, and Israeli Statesman, (December 3, 2015), International Churchill Society, p. 4. https://winstonchurchill.org/publications/finest-hour/finest-hour-170/churchill-chaim-weizmann/ (Accessed April 22, 2023).

87. Manchester: Chaim Weizmann and how the Balfour Declaration was Made in Manchester, (Balfour 100 Highlights): pp.6–7. https://www.balfour100.com/balfour-centenary-lecture/ (Accessed April 22, 2023)…

88. Fred Glueckstein, Finest Hour 170: Churchill and Dr. Weizmann: Scientist, Zionist, and Israeli Statesman, (December 3, 2015), International Churchill Society, p. 5. https://winstonchurchill.org/publications/finest-hour/finest-hour-170/churchill-chaim-weizmann/ (Accessed April 22, 2023).